The Last Gun of the Arctic. Stewart Holland. Sept. 27th 1854. The Portrait from a Daguerreotype of the Young Hero in Possession of His Father.

A romantic Currier print of a sailor sinking with an interesting twist

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A stirring and romanticized portrait of Stewart Holland, the Euro-American engineer trainee who would not abandon his post when his ship, the U.S.M. Steamship Arctic collided with the French iron steamer Vesta in the North Atlantic Ocean, off Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada, September 27, 1854.

The Arctic’s Captain James Luce praised Stewart Holland (deceased), a German sailor (a survivor), and African American Chief Stewardess Anna Downer (deceased) for their heroic deeds. Immediately after the sinking, a cry went up for a statue to be erected in honor of Stewart Holland.

Then, controversy arose when author James McCune Smith declared that a statue for Anna Downer should be erected, too.
Smith took to task the American press for their failure to call forth forth for a monument to be made in Anna Downer’s memory, “because she is a woman, and a colored woman.”¹

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